I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican. In fact, if I were going to characterize my—on health where I come from, I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican and I believe government can lean in the regulatory leaning is okay.—Newt Gingrich (the gibberish too).

To some—perhaps many—Republicans, to be a Theodore Roosevelt Republican is quite respectable. Therein lies the rub. If you’re the type of (Robert) Taft Republican who values your life, liberty and property—then Teddy Roosevelt, “the guy who started the Progressive Party,” and was a proponent of “progressive ideals”—is bad news.

… there were no epidemics related to commercial food processing” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Roosevelt’s “pure food laws” were aimed “at protecting producers,” not the general public. For example, as Powell recounts, some of these early laws set exceptionally high regulatory standards on imported foods as a form of veiled protectionism. Food inspection laws during the Roosevelt era were invariably favored by larger corporations who understood that the laws would disproportionately harm their smaller competitors. “The 1906 Pure Food And Drugs Act empowered the Agriculture Department’s notorious quack, Harvey Washington Wiley, to conduct crazy crusades against foods competing with the interest groups he served” (mostly larger corporate interests).

In a recent post to this blog I commented that the country had “gone to hell in a hand basket”. Pretty original, right? But that’s where we are. We all know what we have in the Democrats. Nothing good and no chance of redemption. I’ve hated them since I was a kid in the 1950’s. But the real burr under my saddle is the Republican party. They remind me of a combination of the Keystone Cops and the Marx Brothers. Here we have a sitting president so obviously inept, obviously corrupt and obviously an actual enemy of the country that a defeat in 2012 should be a forgone conclusion. Yes, Newt has warts. Romney has warts. Bachmann has warts and so on down the line. But, instead of getting their game together and fighting for the future of America they continue to quibble over the usual inside the beltway infighting and government business as usual. AS the great philosopher, Buggs Bunny used to say “What a bunch of Maroons”. I have always resisted a third party for obvious reasons but I am ready to sign up and go on the attack. I hate the Democrat party like a bunch of snakes in a school yard but it’s the Republican party that brings on indigestion.

Why do you say that Harvey Washington Wiley was a quack? As far as I can tell he was a legitimate M.D. (Indiana University) and long-time university chemistry teacher when he started getting into government work. I agree that he and TR were wrong, but I hope you aren’t tossing a word like “quack” around just based on difference in beliefs about the role of government.

It is somewhat pathetic to watch those who claim to support “small government” or even those who claim that their causes is “moral values” to vote for the same Big Government Hypocrites year after year after decade after decade …

The Republicans will mouth a few “small government” pieties against the Democrats just to hold office for them and their whorehouse consultant buddies. They care as much for small government as the Democrats who meet at the Martha’s Vineyards and Hampton soirees care for “the poor”.

Meanwhile, the lemmings are falling off the cliff for their NEWTONIAN hero (Gingrich).